The Society of Colonial Wars

in the State of Illinois

Society of Colonial Wars in Illinois History

Although we may never know what drew the first European settlers to the New World, we can see that they were caught up in the great rivalries between England and Spain and England and the French and Dutch. Similarly, Native Americans were caught up in the same rivalries of continental Europe and in more immediate confrontations as the colonial population expanded. The Illinois Society of Colonial Wars annotated bibliography “American Colonial Wars” has been updated and expanded in this 2nd Edition to capture these themes and include publications made since the society’s 1st Edition of twenty five years ago.

This past year, as the 1982 bibliography of Colonial Wars was being brought up to date, I asked Strother E. Roberts, David Keenan and David A. Davidson who are doctoral candidates at the Department of History of Northwestern University to preserve our original bibliography and to modernize and expand it with references to newer books and materials related to colonies in North America other than those of the Atlantic coast. The expanded bibliography will place the history of the early colonial era in the context of the larger economic and political systems of the world that the early settlers of the Atlantic coast came from, traded with and relied on as they struggled to put down the foundation of our present nation. With that newer mission in mind, the 2007 update has been combined with its twenty-five year old predecessor and is presented as a single annotated bibliography with a table of contents.

I thank Dr. Timothy H. Breen, Department of History, Northwestern University for recommending Strother E. Roberts, David Keenan, and David A. Davidson to help the Illinois Society of Colonial Wars update and expand the scope of the original bibliography published twenty-five years ago. I thank Messrs. Roberts, Keenan and Davidson for their work on this project.

In 1991, Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Illinois and the Sons of the Revolution in the State of Illinois funded the microfilming of the George Rogers Clark collection of papers pertaining to the Illinois Regiment of Virginia State Forces, persons or matters relating to the Illinois Regiment.

The microfilm edition consists of 13 reels containing 16,858 frames with some 85,000 images of original documents. There is usually more than one document per microfilm frame. The documents were dated from January of 1778 through November 5, 1834. There was no consecutive numbering of the microfilm frames for the 13 reels.

The Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Illinois and the Sons of the Revolution in the State of Illinois funded the indexing of this collection. This index was completed May 18, 1995 and has 97,579 entries for 20,110 documents filmed on 13 microfilm reels. The compiler has abstracted and numbered each document for the separate 2,850 pages of the abstract, which indicates the location of the document on each microfilm frame when there is more than one document on a frame. The index does not refer to the page of the abstract or to the assigned document number.

John Bross – Letters from Belle
Council Meeting – 11:30am
Program & Lunch Noon to 1pm
The Casino

DISCLAIMER: Whereas the editors believe the data reprinted herein from our internet and print sources
are in all probability accurate, readers should depend on the bibliographical references for research. The mandate of the
Charter of the General Society of Colonial Wars holds that it shall "collect and preserve" our colonial history and, insofar as
we believe this includes the language and culture of the time, we eschew the currently popular "politically correct" words and
phrases which we otherwise respect for their intent. In their stead we have substituted the words and language prevailing in
their time. Example: For "Native American" we substitute Indian or savage.